User:Tazmanianangel/sandbox

Cognitive Surplus Examples

Cognitive surplus is an externality of what Yochai Benkler coins as ‘the networked information economy’ in which, “A series of changes in the technologies, economic organization, and social practices of production in this environment has created new opportunities for how we make and exchange information, knowledge and culture... [through] a technological-economic feasibility space”. Due to the interconnecting Internet, people are able to connect and exchange information with each other in real time. Clay Shirky emphasizes that cognitive surplus accumulates as users interact with the technology by making updates or posts since, “...tacit information...adds up to a whole greater than the sum of its parts” that can then be enjoyed by its users at large. The Internet thus holds the potential to be valuable and productive for society because it fosters an openly democratic form of communication. In this way, “...social media can be seen as online facilitators or enhancers of human networks—webs of people that promote connectedness as a social value”.

Clay Shirky gives an example of such interactive user activity when describing the site and app, Ushahidi. Ushahidi is a form of “crisis mapping” or “activist mapping” that originated in Kenya. Users reported violence they encountered or knew about, which was aggregated and plotted onto a map, so that others could act accordingly to protect themselves. Through such an app, individual updates add up to a vast accumulation of information for the average user to benefit from. Quickly, Ushahidi spread to serve other political and social functions and crises in various countries. Some of the countries and specific functions were: Russia, to set up a map of needed volunteers after the wildfires; Washington D.C., during winter storms to map out blocked off roads; Haiti, due to the destructive earthquake in 2010; and Chile, because of an earthquake that struck a month after Haiti.

These last two applications of Ushahidi mentioned, which use cognitive surplus to update earthquake crises, is similar to the earthquake reporting site http://earthquake.usgs.gov, which is a government-run site that both updates and allows people from all over the world to add to the surplus of information regarding earthquakes. On the home page, people can click on “latest earthquakes” and see a list of the latitude and longitude coordinates of the cities around the world where an earthquake struck, how strong it was on the Richter Magnitude Scale, the depth of its effects, and when it was last updated. This function is adjacent to the “significant earthquakes” section which directly notifies the viewer of strong earthquakes over the past month. Perhaps the most cooperative and interactive function of this site, however, is the “Did You Feel it?” link on the homepage. If you feel an earthquake, the site urges you to report it there. Upon clicking, a list of all of the previous user updates made within the past day, and then week, appear, perhaps to deter multiple reports of the same account. If you see that nobody has reported an earthquake that you felt, one proceeds to click “report unknown event”. Here, you submit information such as: the location of the earthquake, time of the earthquake, your situation when the earthquake occurred, your experience of the earthquake, the earthquake effects, any damage to your building, as well as optional comments or contact information. People around the world benefit from such information. Both Ushahidi, and the government sponsored Earthquake Hazards Program, are fine examples of online sites that use cognitive surplus to ameliorate the public sphere.